She Is The Darkness

8

When the Old Man decides to move he moves. It was still tomb dark when I left the Palace and found him waiting with two of the giant black stallions that had come down from the north with the Black Company. Specially bred during the Lady's heyday, with sorcery instilled into their very bones, they could run forever without getting tired and could outrace any mundane steed. And they were almost as smart as a really stupid human.

Croaker grinned down at my in-laws. They were completely nonplussed by this development. How were they supposed to keep up?

Kind of pissed me off, too. "I'll handle it," I said in Nyueng Bao. I handed Thai Dei my stuff, climbed the monster Croaker had brought for me. It had been a long time since I had ridden one but this one seemed to remember me. It tossed its head and snorted a greeting. "You too, big boy." I took my stuff from Thai Dei.

"Where's the standard?" Croaker demanded.

"In the wagon with One-Eye. Sleepy put it there before—"

"You let it out of your control? You don't ever let it out of your control."

"I was thinking about giving Sleepy the job." Standard-bearer was one of the hats I wore. And not one of my favorites. Now that I am Annalist I should be passing it on. Croaker has mentioned that himself on occasion. "Give me your stuff now," I told Thai Dei once I had mine settled in front of me.

Thai Dei's eyes got big as he realized what I intended.

I told Mother Gota and Uncle Doj, "Stay on the stone road all the way and you'll catch up with the army. If you're stopped show the soldiers your papers." Another innovation of the Liberator. More and more people involved in the war effort were being given bits of paper telling who they were and who was responsible for them. Since hardly anybody was literate the effort did not seem worthwhile.

Maybe. But the Old Man always has his reasons. Even when those are simply to confuse.

Croaker realized what I was doing just as I extended my hand to help Thai Dei climb. He opened his mouth to raise hell. I said, "Don't bother. It ain't worth a fight."

Thai Dei looks like a skull with a thin layer of dark leather over it at the best of times. Now he looked as though he had just heard a death sentence pronounced. "It'll be all right," I told him, realizing he had never been on a horse. The Nyueng Bao have water buffalo and a few elephants. They do not ride those, except as children sometimes, helping with the plowing.

He did not want to do it. He really did not. He looked at Uncle Doj. Doj said nothing. It was Thai Dei's call.

Croaker must have started looking smug or something. Thai Dei stared at him for a moment, shuddered all over, then extended his good hand. I pulled. Thai Dei was as hard and tough as they came but he weighed almost nothing.

The horse gave me a look nearly as ugly as the one I had gotten from my boss. The fact that they are capable of a job does not make the beasts eager to do it.

"Whenever you're ready," Croaker said.

"Go."

He headed out. The pace he set was savage. He rode like he could feel no pain. He grumbled and fussed at me to keep up. He grumbled even more after we collected a cavalry escort south of the city. The regular horses had no hope of matching the pace he wanted to set. He had to keep waiting for them to catch up. Usually he was well ahead, surrounded by crows. The birds came and went and when we exchanged words he always knew things like where Blade was, where our troops were, where there was resistance to the Taglian advance and where there was none. He knew that Mogaba had sent cavalry north to blunt our advance.

It was weird. The man just plain knew things he should not. Not without walking with the ghost. And One-Eye was still ahead of us, making much better time than I would have believed possible had we not been trying to catch him.

Croaker got over his snit after the first day. He became social again. Headed for the Ghoja Ford, he asked, "You remember the first time we came here?"

"I remember rain and mud and misery and a hundred Shadowlanders trying to kill us."

"Those were the days, Murgen."

"They were as close to hell as I want to get. And that's said from the viewpoint of a man who's been a whole lot closer."

He chuckled. "So thank me for this nice new road."

"Thank you for the nice new road." The Taglians called it the Rock Road or Stone Road. The first time we traveled it, it had been nothing but a snake of mud.

"You really think Sleepy is right for the standardbearer job?"

"I've been thinking about that. I'm not ready to give it up yet."

"This is the same Murgen who complained that he's always the first guy into every scrape?"

"I said I've been thinking. I find I've got some extra motivation." Our other companions told me I was handling Sarie's loss pretty well. I thought so myself.

Croaker looked back at Thai Dei, who was clinging desperately to a swaybacked dapple mare we had picked up thirty miles back. He was handling his problem moderately well, too, for a guy who could use only one hand.

Croaker told me, "Don't let motivation get in the way of good sense. When all the rest is said and done we're still the Black Company. We get the other guys to do the dying."

"I'm in control. I was a Black Company brother a lot longer than I was Sarie's husband. I learned how to manage my emotions."

He did not seem convinced. And I understood. He was concerned not about me as I existed right now but as I would in a crunch. The survival of the whole Company might hinge on which way one man jumped when the shitstorm hit.

The Captain glanced back. Despite their best efforts our escort had begun to string out. He paid no attention to them. He asked, "Learned anything about your in-laws?"

"Again?" He never let up. And I did not have an answer for him. "How about ‘love is blind'?"

"Murgen, you're a damned fool if you really believe that. Maybe you ought to go back and reread the Books of Croaker."

He lost me there. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I've got me a lady, too. Still alive, granted. We've got plenty tied up in each other. We made us a baby together. Any two fools can do that by accident, of course, but it's usually a benchmark in a relationship. But what we have as man and woman, father and mother, doesn't mean I trust Lady even a little in any but that one way. And she can't trust me. It's the way she's made. It's the life she lived."

"Sahrie never had any ambitions, boss. Except maybe to get me to actually go into the farming I'm always talking about so I wouldn't get skragged gloriously in some typically heroic military manner like falling off a horse and drowning while I was crossing a creek during the rainy season."

"Sahra never worried me, Murgen. What bothers me is this uncle who doesn't act like any other Nyueng Bao I've ever seen."

"Hey, he's one old guy who has a thing about swords. He's a priest and his scripture is sharp steel. And he's got a grudge. Just keep him pointed toward the Shadowmaster."

Croaker nodded grimly. "Time will tell." He did grim very well.

We crossed the great stone bridge Lady had ordered built at Ghoja. Crows filled the trees on the southern bank. They squabbled and carried on and seemed to find us highly amusing.

I said, "I worry more about those things."

Croaker did not respond. He did order a halt to rest the animals. So many had gone south ahead of us that there were no well rested remounts available. Amidst all the saluting and hasty turning out of an honor guard and whatnot, I stared southward and said, "That little clown is making damned good time." I had asked already and had learned that One-Eye was still a day ahead.

"We'll catch him before we get to Dejagore." Croaker eyed me as though he feared the city name would strike me with the impact of some terrible spell. I disappointed him. Thai Dei, who could follow the conversation because we were speaking Taglian, showed no reaction, either, though the siege had been as terrible for his people as for the Company. Nyueng Bao seldom betray any emotion in the presence of outsiders.

I told Thai Dei, "Give your horse to the groom and let's see if we can't find something decent to eat." Living on horseback is not a gourmet's delight.

For the same reason there were no fresh remounts, there were very few delicacies at the Ghoja fortress, but because we belonged to the Liberator's party we were given a newly taken gamecock that was so full of juice and substance my stomach nearly rebelled at taking it in. After eating we got to stay inside, out of the cold, and get some sleep. I should have stuck to Croaker in case his talks with local commanders turned up anything that belonged in the Annals, but after a short interior debate I chose sleep instead. If he heard anything worthwhile the Old Man would tell me. If necessary I could come back with Smoke later.

I dreamed but did not remember the dreams long enough to note them down. They were unpleasant but not overpowering or so terrible Thai Dei had to awaken me.

We were back on the road before sunrise.

We overtook One-Eye passing through the hills that surround Dejagore. When I first glimpsed his wagon and realized it had to be him I started to shudder and had to fight an urge to kick my mount into a faster pace. I wanted to get to Smoke.

Maybe I had more of a problem than I wanted to admit.

I did not show it enough to be noticed, though.

One-Eye never slowed down a bit.

There had been some changes since my days of hell in Dejagore or Jaicur, as its natives called it, or Stormgard, as it was named while it was the seat of the deceased Shadowmaster Stormshadow. Poor witch, she had been totally unable to guard the Shadowlands against the storm of the Black Company.

The plain outside the city had been drained of all water and cleared of wreckage and corpses, though I thought I could still smell death in the air. Prisoners of war from the Shadowlands still labored on the city walls and inside the city itself. Why seemed problematic. There were almost no Jaicuri left alive.

"Interesting notion, planting the plain in grain," I said, seeing what looked like winter wheat peeping through last year's stubble.

"One of Lady's ideas," Croaker replied. He still watched me as though he expected me to start foaming at the mouth any minute. "Anywhere there is a permanent garrison one of the responsibilities of the soldiers is to raise their own food."

When it came to the logistics of war Lady was more the expert than Croaker. Till we came to Taglios he was never part of anything bigger than the Company. Lady had managed the warmaking instruments of a vast empire for decades.

The Old Man simply left most of that stuff to Lady. He would rather lie back scheming his schemes and piling up the tools Lady could use.

The crop notion was not new. Lady had done the same around most of her permanent installations in the north.

You got to go with what works.

Helps keep the neighbors more tractable, too, if you are not stealing their daughters and seed grain.

"You sure you're all right?" Croaker demanded.

We were nearly at the foot of the ramp to the north barbican. One-Eye was no more than a hundred feet ahead now, perfectly aware of our presence, but not slowing down a bit. I guess I was starting to push ahead.

"I've got it under control, Captain. I don't fall off into the past anymore and I hardly ever wake up screaming. I hold it down to a little shaking and sweating."

"Anything starts getting to you, I want to know. I expect to be here a while. You're going to need to be able to take it."

"I won't screw up," I promised.